


Better With You

by unbecomings



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Friends With Benefits, Mutual Masturbation, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-12-16 09:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbecomings/pseuds/unbecomings
Summary: Lindsey and Emily cross a line one night during a hotel stay and have to try to keep it from unraveling everything around them.





	1. Chapter 1

Lindsey needs to get laid. 

The only time she can even _think_ that sentence is when she’s drunk. She’s very drunk now, and daydreaming about going home and getting off. The problem is, she won’t be home for days, and right now she has to go back to a hotel room she’s sharing with Emily, who is also drunk.

“I am trashed,” Emily announces, flopping back on the nearest bed, which happens to be Lindsey’s. 

“We’re not that drunk,” Lindsey says. “Take your shoes off.”

She has a vibrator at home, just a little one. A quiet little one that she can use without worrying about being heard. That’s what she’s thinking about. 

“You take them off,” Emily says. 

Lindsey yanks Emily’s sneakers off and tosses them aside. 

“Get in your own bed,” she says, but she doesn’t mean it. Emily scoots over and that’s all Lindsey wanted- space to flop down next to her. 

“You good?” Emily asks.

Lindsey can feel Emily’s body heat. When she closes her eyes she can imagine whoever’s lying next to her is about to roll over and kiss her, is about to pull Lindsey on top so Lindsey can kiss them into the mattress. It’s not Emily in her drunk imagination, but it’s also not _not_ Emily. 

“I’m…” Lindsey trails off, but the train is already off the tracks, “I’m...so horny.”

“Oh my God,” Emily gasps, laughing, “I get the same fucking way when I drink, nobody ever talks about it. It’s like, a little buzz and I’ve already got a boner.”

“I hate you,” Lindsey says, “don’t call it that.”

“It’s 2019,” Emily says, “girls can have boners.”

“Son,” Lindsey says, “shut up.”

“The liquor goes right to my diiiiick,” Emily laughs. “Okay, I mean, same. That’s what I mean. I get it. Me too. Hey, if you need to get off, by all means, be my guest.”

“I’m not doing it _here,_,” Lindsey says. As much as Emily’s proximity is making things worse, Lindsey also welcomes it. She knows she’s bright red, and she doesn’t need Emily to see it.

“Why not?” Emily says, “I’ll do it too if it makes you feel better.”

Lindsey falls silent. She’s thinking about it--thinking about how easy it would be to shuck her jeans down and get her hand in her underwear, knowing how turned on she already is--and getting distracted by the idea of it, forgetting that they’re theoretically having a conversation. Emily scratches her stomach under her shirt, pulling it up just high enough that Lindsey can see the way her stomach slopes down to meet the waist of her jeans. She wants to put her mouth there. She’s not drunk enough to be having _that_ thought.

“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” Emily says.

“Shut up and take your pants off,” Lindsey says, fumbling with the button on her jeans and shoving them down over her hips.

For a heart-stopping second, she thinks Emily won’t do it. But then Emily does the same, wriggling out of her skintight skinny jeans, and Lindsey is suddenly doing her best not to stare too hard at the long, smooth expanse of Emily’s legs. Legs she’s seen many times and never thought about touching.

Emily’s underwear is light blue, but Lindsey shouldn’t be looking at that, either. She’s a little bit self-conscious about her gray ones, but also very aware that Emily isn’t looking at them and hasn’t noticed. Emily does, however, make eye contact with Lindsey when she shoves her hand into her underwear. It’s brief, but it’s enough to send a shudder down Lindsey’s spine, and she tips her head back and closes her eyes when she follows suit.

Lindsey regrets closing her eyes immediately. The image of Emily glancing at her with her hand between her legs festers and festers until Lindsey is too self-conscious to do anything but leave her hand where it is, lingering between her own legs. When she opens her eyes to stare at the ceiling, she can hear and feel Emily repositioning her legs, letting her knees fall open. One of them falls to rest against Lindsey’s thigh, and that’s what startles Lindsey back into things.

It’s too easy. It’s too easy to do. She’s too worked up, too into it, too focused on every little sound, the swish of sheets under Emily’s restless legs, the intake of breath when Emily--Lindsey doesn’t know what she’s doing but she _wants to_. She wants to see it. When she glances over, Emily’s eyes are closed, and she takes the opportunity to watch even though she feels guilty about it. She gets fixated on the way Emily’s wrist flexes, the way she uses her heels digging into the bed to push her hips up into her hand.

Lindsey gives herself what she needs, the right amount of pressure with just her two fingertips, and watches Emily work herself up until she gets embarrassed enough to look away. By then she has a good enough image that she can sustain it in her mind, and she can hear the way Emily’s breath has gone quick and shallow. She closes her eyes again, imagining herself bearing down on Emily, making her quiet, imagining Emily’s legs wrapping around her hips, hating herself more every second.

She’s starting to lose herself in it when Emily reaches over and grabs her forearm. Lindsey freezes, thinking she’s done something wrong, but when she opens her eyes Emily hasn’t stopped, and Lindsey’s gaze snags on the way Emily’s wrist and arm are moving. Emily’s eyes are still closed but her mouth is open and her brows are drawn together in concentration. She grips Lindsey’s forearm and Lindsey goes back to touching herself because she knows Emily will be able to tell that she’s stopped, and because she wants to. She watches Emily until the crease between Emily’s brows deepens and then, suddenly, Emily is turning her head and her upper body, pressing her face into Lindsey’s neck. Lindsey holds her breath but doesn’t stop the movement of her own hand, propping her knees up so she can get a better angle. 

Emily gasps, digging her nails into Lindsey’s forearm, her thighs clamping together around her hand. Lindsey closes her eyes, afraid Emily will open her own to find that she’s being watched, and waits for Emily to move away from her. She hasn’t gotten off and she can’t now, now that Emily has. Now she has an _audience_. It was better when Emily was preoccupied. Now it means too much that Lindsey was imagining the way it would feel to press Emily into the mattress—that she still is. 

Emily is still breathing hard against Lindsey’s neck, her nose pressed against Lindsey’s skin. Lindsey is still touching herself but she’s afraid it won’t happen, and she’s just starting to entertain the idea of faking it when Emily gently strokes her thumb along the inner part of Lindsey’s forearm. 

Lindsey almost misses it, but when it happens again she knows she’s not making it up. Emily is breathing on her and encouraging her with that hand on her arm and Lindsey is over the edge before she realizes it. She groans quietly, her hips bucking up into her hand, and then just as quickly she’s embarrassed and silent while she rides it out. Emily doesn’t let go of her until Lindsey takes a deep, shuddery breath and opens her eyes. 

“Well, it worked,” Emily says. Her face is pink from exertion and Lindsey has to break eye contact to avoid reaching for Emily’s flyaway hairs. 

“Thanks,” Lindsey says, clasping her hands over her stomach. She’s still wearing most of her clothes. Emily is, too. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Emily points out. Lindsey panics. 

“Thanks for the suggestion,” she corrects herself, “and for being cool about it.”

“No problem,” Emily says, sitting up, “anytime. I mean, I got off too, so…”

Lindsey doesn’t ask her if she means it. Emily uses the bathroom first while Lindsey puts her jeans back on, which is stupid because she’s just about to take them off again. But it feels wrong not to be fully-clothed now, even before Emily leaves the bathroom and smiles awkwardly at Lindsey.

By the time Lindsey leaves the bathroom, Emily is asleep in the other bed, the one they didn’t just defile. Lindsey slips under the covers of _that_ bed and closes her eyes. 

She falls asleep thinking about Emily’s face pressed into her neck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was all Emily's idea, but that doesn't mean she's having an easier time than Lindsey is.

It takes Emily a full week before she cracks.

She thinks about it constantly. Every time she sees Lindsey, at least, which is every day, so more or less constantly. She thinks about it enough that she’s surprised it took her a full week to actually lay in bed past midnight and think about it.

“Fuck,” she mumbles, throwing her arm across her face.

_Okay. Okay._

Okay.

It’s so not a big deal. It doesn’t have to be. It’s not like they even touched each other. Not really, not in a way that matters. And, most importantly, it’s not like Emily was lying there thinking about Lindsey while she was getting off. That would have made it weird. Actually, she had been surprised by the fact that she didn’t need to think about anything at all. Her brain was completely empty, which she’s not sure has ever happened before. She’d like to replicate that. She’d like to stop thinking about something stupid they did while they were drunk.

Thinking about it turns her on. She needs to re-associate touching herself with...literally anything other than Lindsey also touching herself. That’s how she ends up with a hand between her legs, closing her eyes, willing herself to conjure up any other fantasy.

It’s not like she has a list. Maybe she has a list. She has things she likes to think about--not people so much as positions, scenarios. Usually that doesn’t come with a face, just the idea of a sensation. This time she can’t get there. 

She thinks of a position she likes, one that she’s only been in a few times--with a girl on top of her, her knees hooked over the girl’s shoulders, legs bent so that there’s almost no room to breathe between her legs being pinned down and the weight of someone above her. That helps, not that she needs help getting going, and she loses herself in a vague memory of what that was like, of soft skin under her hands and hair running through her fingers and a hot mouth on her neck. She doesn’t realize until she comes that she’s been thinking about Lindsey all along. She doesn’t realize it until Lindsey’s name leaves her lips. 

By then it’s too late to stop even if she wanted to. She’s already coming, and the worst part is the sudden rush of guilt ruins her orgasm so that she’s not really even satisfied afterwards, and she’s too embarrassed to try again. 

Emily can feel herself slipping further into denial every second. So maybe she thinks Lindsey is hot. Maybe she thought about Lindsey fucking her in order to get off just now. She can’t pretend that she _didn’t_, or that they didn’t do what they did, but she can decide that it means nothing more than the pure physical attraction itself. And why wouldn’t she be attracted to Lindsey? Anyone that’s attracted to women would be attracted to Lindsey. Lindsey is a lesbian wet dream. She’s tall and broad-shouldered and her hands are long and soft and her thighs are--it’s not like anyone could blame her. 

Her only worry is that it would freak Lindsey out to know how hot Emily thinks she is. That, though, is something she can keep to herself. It’s not as if this is ever going to come up again; at some point Emily will get laid, actually laid, and she’ll be able to forget.

She really believes that until the next day. She’s already in the ice bath when Lindsey shows up, scrolling through a pitbull rescue Instagram page and sending examples to her sister. She makes the mistake of looking up when Lindsey comes in, and Lindsey makes eye contact with her when she peels her shirt over her head. She doesn’t smile and Emily doesn’t look away and they get caught in an awful limbo where Emily’s just watching while Lindsey strips to her underwear and neither of them blinks.

When Lindsey sinks into the ice bath with her and stretches out her legs, she maneuvers so that her legs are staggered with Emily’s. Her heel brushes against the inside of Emily’s thigh and Emily swallows.

“Hey,” Lindsey says, and Emily panics, thinking somehow Lindsey can read her mind. It was less than 24 hours ago that Emily had gotten off thinking about Lindsey’s fingers.

“What’s up,” Emily says.

Lindsey turns her phone around to show Emily a picture of an extremely large, extremely fluffy cat that looks like the villain in a Disney Channel original movie.

“I want one,” she says, “I’m gonna get a cat.”

“No,” Emily says, “I will stop hanging out with you.”

“You won’t,” Lindsey says, “you’d love it.”

“What the fuck do you even do with a cat?” Emily says, “you can’t even take a cat for a walk. You can’t make them go fetch a ball.”

“Maybe I just want to cuddle,” Lindsey says, and if Emily feels Lindsey’s foot against her thigh again, it’s just her imagination.

It’s easier when they’re in a group. Like later at dinner when it’s them and Caitlin and Ellie, cramped into a booth. Emily is sandwiched between Caitlin and Lindsey, and it feels normal. She doesn’t have any reaction to how close she is to Lindsey here, and that feels like proof of something important. 

“Linds,” Caitlin says, “can I see your phone for a sec, mate? There’s an app I wanna download for you.”

Lindsey hands her phone over. Emily is a little shocked, but she doesn’t say anything. She’d rather die than let anyone see her phone, much less someone like Caitlin, who she knows wouldn’t hesitate to roast her over what she might find. Lindsey doesn’t seem bothered, though. She leans her head onto one hand and peers down at the menu. She leans into Emily’s space and points to a drink. 

“This sounds good,” she says, but Emily isn’t reading it. She’s realizing that the smell of Lindsey’s shampoo has become comforting to her, and trying to puzzle _that_ out. 

“Aren’t you going gluten free?” Ellie asks, from Caitlin’s other side. 

“For a week,” Lindsey says, “it’s just an experiment. And there’s no gluten in vodka, El.”

“There’s gluten in alcohol,” Ellie insists. 

“Vodka is made from potatoes,” Emily interjects, “that’s a starch, not a grain. No gluten.”

Ellie blinks uncomprehendingly at her. Lindsey giggles, and Emily feels a flash of irritation at how close Lindsey is, how much Lindsey is crowding her when she needs to breathe. She grits her teeth and focuses on the menu, trying to decide what she wants. She’s just re-centered herself when Caitlin hands back Lindsey’s phone. 

“_Tinder_,” Lindsey says, scornfully, “I thought you meant something cool. Oh my God.You made me a profile? How do I delete this?”

“Stop,” Caitlin says, completely missing Emily’s facial expression, “think about it. This is the gayest neighborhood in the city. Just set your radius so it’s close and start swiping. Trust me.”

“Let me see that,” Emily snaps, and Lindsey hands it over immediately. 

**Lindsey, 25**

**footy, avocado toast, greys reruns  
nothing serious :))**

“I would never use that emoji,” Lindsey says. 

The first picture is one Emily recognizes. Originally it was a picture of her, Lindsey and Mal, but now it’s just Lindsey, in a dark blue top and a black jacket, smiling at the camera. Her arm is around Emily’s shoulders offscreen. 

“You cropped me,” Emily complains. 

“She has to look single,” Caitlin replies. 

“I can show you how to delete your account,” Emily says. All Lindsey’s pictures are ones she’s already seen. She’s very swipeable, in spite of how bad her bio is. It doesn’t capture Lindsey at all. 

“No,” Lindsey says, reaching to take her phone back, “leave it.” 

Later, lying in bed, Emily considers that maybe Lindsey was smart to leave her account where it is. Maybe Tinder—which Emily hasn’t opened in months—is the answer. That’s how she ends up swiping through a couple of girls, with her heart only half in it. 

But then, of course, there’s Lindsey. 

To her credit, Emily does hesitate. She scrolls through all of Lindsey’s pictures and tries to pretend she doesn’t know Lindsey at all. She tries to imagine whether she would have been into Lindsey enough to swipe right if they were strangers. She settles on yes and spends another few seconds debating whether or not to actually do it. 

Chances are, Lindsey hasn’t seen her. And if she has, she probably didn’t swipe right, which means more than likely, this will never even come up. But also, if Lindsey did swipe right, Emily wants to _know_. So she braces herself swipes right. 

They match immediately. Emily locks her phone, places it carefully on the farthest edge of her nightstand, rolls over, and forces herself to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tinder comes in handy, depending on who you ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all the comments! I love reading them and I love that you’re enjoying this as much as I’m enjoying writing it.

Lindsey can’t get off anymore.

Emily broke her.

She really does believe that. She’s used Tinder before but not like this, not strictly for sex, and it’s _weird_. She’s not sure that she likes it. She doesn’t hate it, but it feels weird, like she’s in the wrong life.

The girl is nice, though. Her name is Heidi, and she makes it very clear that she’s not intending to see Lindsey again after tonight. Her apartment is very clean and quiet, but it’s clear that she does actually live in it and this isn’t some kind of weird halfway house-type situation, which Lindsey knows is the sort of thing you only worry about if you’ve never had a one night stand.

Lindsey also doesn’t lie when Heidi toes off her shoes and asks, “have you done this before?”

“Sex?” Lindsey asks, “I mean, yeah.”

“No,” Heidi says, “like, _just_ sex.”

“Oh,” Lindsey says. Then, even though she can feel herself blushing, she admits, “no.”

“Just let me know if you want to stop,” Heidi says.

Lindsey doesn’t want to stop. 

Getting Heidi off helps. It really does help to be naked with someone, to close her eyes and focus on the feeling of skin on skin, to feel good at something. Heidi tells her what she wants and Lindsey does as she’s asked and all in all it doesn’t take all that long before Lindsey’s on her back. Even then she doesn’t want to stop, because there’s something freeing about the fact that she knows she’ll never see Heidi again.

She doesn’t want to stop until she realizes that she’ll never get off like this, and that Heidi is going to keep trying, and she’s going to have to come up with something to end this somehow. 

That’s how she ends up heading home, smelling like someone else, feeling guilty for faking an orgasm, and still aching for a real one.

When she gets back to her apartment it’s late enough that she could just go to bed, so that’s what she does. She gets undressed mechanically. Her body looks no different to her even though it feels like it should. The shower doesn’t do much to turn her off, and she ends up in her own bed, thinking about the ache between her legs, how close Heidi had gotten her, and the wall she kept hitting. 

Maybe it was Heidi. Maybe if she tries—

So she tries. She doesn’t even need the lube in her bedside table drawer, she’s still that worked up even from thinking about it that her fingers come back slick from between her thighs. She doesn’t take her time because she doesn’t need to. She fishes in the drawer for her vibrator and digs her heels into the bed and waits. 

And nothing happens. She can’t get there. She tries everything, even thinking about the last time she got off, with Emily’s fingers curled around her forearm, but it doesn’t help. She stays right on the brink of an orgasm that never comes, until she’s frustrated enough to toss the vibrator aside and roll onto her stomach and go to bed. 

She doesn’t feel better the next day. She forgets about it for most of the day, but in the quiet moments after practice, sitting next to Emily in the car on the way back, she toys with the idea of bringing up Tinder. 

Emily hasn’t messaged her. It’s been three days since they matched. 

She’s about to open her mouth when Emily reaches over and turns up the volume on the radio. She starts dancing in the passenger seat, the way she always does, like nothing is different, and Lindsey’s not willing to mess with that. Most of her doesn’t want things to be different, not really. She doesn’t want Emily to stop dancing, to be self conscious, to stop making her laugh. Even if that means she never has an orgasm again. 

“You’re a fucking nerd,” Lindsey says, grinning. 

“You love it,” Emily says, doing something with her arms that Lindsey couldn’t replicate if she wanted to try. 

Lindsey can’t argue with that. 

She makes it another two days before the inability to get off drives her over the edge, when lying in her bed with her vibrator’s battery dying and her legs shaking makes her frustrated enough to open Tinder again. The first thing she does is delete her chat with Heidi. The second thing she does is click on Emily’s picture. 

Her bio is just a single dumb emoji—the chick hatching from an egg—and Lindsey contemplates starting a conversation about that, but that feels too much like the way she’d use Tinder with anyone else. 

**Lindsey**: you wanna come up here?

At first she thinks Emily won’t see it, and then she thinks Emily will ignore it. She’s decided to give up on it, changing into a new pair of underwear to sleep in, when her phone buzzes. 

**Emily**: what for?

Lindsey takes a deep breath. 

**Lindsey**: what do people usually use Tinder for?

Emily doesn’t answer, but this time Lindsey doesn’t really even have time to worry about it before there’s a knock on her door. She opens it to find Emily standing there, her sneakers untied, in track pants and a t-shirt. Her bun is messy. Lindsey wants to kiss her. 

“What’s up Sonnett,” Lindsey croaks, and steps back to let Emily in. 

“You tell me,” Emily says. 

Lindsey is too nervous to say it. She closes the door behind Emily and immediately feels like she’s made a mistake and won’t have the nerve to follow through. It reminds her a little of the feeling right before having to take a penalty—being set up to do something she wants to do but isn’t sure she can. 

“Um,” she says, finding a compromise with herself, “I mean, what we did last time worked for both of us so I thought…”

That wasn’t what she was thinking, but if the object is to finally get off, she at least knows it’ll work. 

“Oh,” Emily says. She looks a little crestfallen, and she’s still searching Lindsey’s face for something. All the attention makes Lindsey squirm. 

“We don’t have to,” Lindsey says, “I don’t want you to feel pressured or obligated or whatever, I just thought—since we matched—“

“We can sleep together,” Emily breaks in, “it doesn’t have to be a big deal for us to hook up. If you want.”

Lindsey wants. Every single atom of Lindsey’s body _wants_. She almost agrees immediately, but some part of her brain raises an alarm at the idea of a guiltless hookup. Emily is her best friend. Lindsey has definitely seen enough movies about this stuff to know that there are only a handful of ways that can end, and most of them are forms of disaster. It doesn’t surprise her that Emily wants this to be a casual thing, but Lindsey knows, from Heidi and before, that she’s not cut out for it.

“Are you sure?” she asks doubtfully.

“Yes,” Emily says quickly, “definitely. Listen, we can make a rule. We don’t even kiss. No mouths above the neck. Then it’s just great sex with a great friend.”

Lindsey is so antsy that even with the voice in the back of her mind begging her to reconsider, that’s enough to convince her to try it. 

“Yeah, okay,” she says, “let’s do it.”

Already it feels impossible to resist the urge to kiss Emily. She manages, awkwardly turning to head into her bedroom, but it seems like it would be a lot less difficult to get things going if she could just kiss Emily like a normal person. Instead, in her room, she pulls her shirt over her head and watches Emily’s face turn pink. Lindsey reaches behind her back for the clasp of her bra and Emily glances away. 

“I don’t know how you’re getting off with something _that_ small,” Emily jokes, and Lindsey realizes she’s left her stupid vibrator on the bedside table, where Emily has seen it. She stops trying to unhook her bra, and she can feel herself turning bright red. She’s trying to think of ways out when Emily whips her own shirt over her head and reaches for Lindsey’s hand. She guides Lindsey’s hand around behind her back to the clasp of her own bra, and Lindsey, thumbing it open, forgets about the bad joke entirely.

For the first time, Lindsey doesn’t avert her gaze from Emily’s nakedness. She stares and Emily lets her, and Lindsey acts before thinking, reaching out to trail her fingertips along Emily’s chest, chasing a spray of freckles down between her breasts. When she glances up at Emily’s face, Emily is blushing, but she’s smirking a little, too. Not unkindly, just like she knows exactly how hot she is, which wouldn’t be surprising. 

“You can touch them,” Emily says. 

“Shut up,” Lindsey says, but hearing it does something to her confidence. She reaches out with both hands, watching them as she touches Emily’s breasts because watching Emily’s face is too much. She only glances up again when she pinches Emily’s nipples gently, and only because Emily makes a quiet sound when she does it. Emily sways closer to her, steadying herself with a hand on Lindsey’s shoulder, and Lindsey’s eyes drop to Emily’s mouth. 

She can’t kiss Emily. But she can push Emily back onto her bed and get her mouth on Emily’s skin. She sucks Emily’s nipple into her mouth and when she does, Emily moans. It’s quiet and hoarse but it’s a great sound, a sound Lindsey wants to hear again. She switches to the other side and Emily reaches for her, but stops short of putting her hands in Lindsey’s hair. Lindsey tries not to be disappointed, but it doesn’t take long before she’s distracted by Emily flipping them. Emily is much stronger than Lindsey expected, and that’s what she’s thinking about when Emily swings a leg over to straddle her. 

“Take your bra off,” Emily murmurs. 

“You can’t figure out a bra clasp?” Lindsey jokes, and Emily tilts her head. 

“Maybe I just wanna watch,” she says, and that sentence shoots straight between Lindsey’s legs. 

Lindsey arches off the bed just far enough to unhook her bra and tug it over her shoulders. Emily is quiet and still for a moment before she reaches to palm Lindsey’s breasts, and Lindsey gets overwhelmed enough that she has to close her eyes. She’s so turned on already, from trying to get herself off earlier to all of _this_, that she’s starting to get genuinely uncomfortable. She’s afraid, when Emily maneuvers to get a thigh between hers, that she’ll come right then and there.

And of course, after days of trying, she does. 

All it takes is Emily’s thigh between her legs and the pressure of Emily’s hand against her breast and Lindsey is gone, trying not to show it, breathing harshly in through her nose and exhaling in increments. She’s still shaking and she knows her face is red, but maybe, if she’s lucky, Emily is too distracted to tell. It seems like it, anyway, because Emily ends up dragging her mouth along Lindsey’s collarbones, trailing her hand down Lindsey’s ribs and stomach. She doesn’t say a word, and Lindsey does her best to maintain the illusion of keeping it together. She doesn’t want Emily to stop. She doesn’t want Emily to _leave_. She doesn’t want to have to think about why she can only come with Emily there. 

For now she doesn’t have to, because Emily is busy mouthing along the curve of her breast and Lindsey can’t think at all. She fists her hands into her blanket even though she wants to thread her fingers through Emily’s hair. It looks soft. Emily sits up when she reaches Lindsey’s waistband and tugs at her sweats, and Lindsey kicks out of them even though she knows there’s no hiding from Emily anymore. That’s two pairs of underwear she’ll need to wash tomorrow but at least now she can think. 

Emily’s eyes dip briefly to Lindsey’s underwear and Lindsey almost dies of embarrassment right there. There’s no way for her to know if Emily can tell how wet she is without touching her, but it doesn’t matter, because Emily’s going to touch her and she’s _going_ to find out, even if she hasn’t already. Lindsey is holding her breath by the time Emily places a hand on her stomach, thumb dipping just below the top of her underwear. 

“Is there anything in particular you um...don’t like?” Emily asks, and Lindsey opens her eyes and is startled by the sudden shyness on Emily’s face. 

“Not that I know of,” Lindsey says.

“Stop me if it’s not working for you,” Emily says. Lindsey somehow contains the urge to tell her that the hoarseness of her voice is already working for her. Again. 

“I will,” she promises, and Emily watches her own hand as she slides it down the front of Lindsey’s underwear. Lindsey closes her eyes again because she doesn’t want to see the look on Emily’s face when Emily finally touches her. Emily is very quiet, but she doesn’t recoil or anything. Instead she uses her other hand to tug at Lindsey’s underwear, and Lindsey moves to  
help her pull them off. They get caught on her hips and suddenly she feels huge looking down at herself with Emily’s hands on her, until she catches Emily’s gaze for a split second and sees the hunger in her face. 

Nobody’s ever looked at her like that. Lindsey wouldn’t have been able to imagine it even if she had wanted to and now she knows it’ll always be burned into her memory. She exhales and drops her head and closes her eyes while Emily pulls her underwear down her leg and tosses it aside, and she does her best to be still and quiet when Emily’s fingers slide between her thighs again. It turns out that already having gotten off before this point is _helfpful_, because she knows that it’ll take longer this time around, and she likes that. She wants this to go on for as long as possible, now that she’s not inadvertently torturing herself. 

At first it’s just Emily’s fingertips, which isn’t going to be enough. Lindsey does shudder when Emily places her free hand on her thigh, but it’s not until Emily gives Lindsey her fingers that Lindsey makes a sound.

She gasps quietly and Emily freezes.

“Linds,” she says.

“Good,” Lindsey says, “I’m good, I’m good. You’re good.”

“Can I use my mouth,” Emily blurts, and Lindsey almost passes out.

It comes out so fast that she doesn’t even really ask it as a question. She’s still moving her hand, and Lindsey is distracted by how good Emily’s fingers feel, distracted enough that it takes her a few seconds to realize she’s supposed to answer.

“You can do whatever you want,” Lindsey says, and Emily laughs, sliding the hand from Lindsey’s thigh back up over her stomach.

“Don’t tell me _that_” she says, “that sounds like a challenge.”

Lindsey doesn’t answer. Emily slides down the bed but keeps her hand where it is, working Lindsey up with two fingers. She uses her hand to press Lindsey’s legs further apart before she turns her wrist over, and just the change in angle has Lindsey’s thighs shaking with the effort of holding it together. The second she feels Emily’s mouth, Lindsey’s hands fly to Emily’s hair without her really even meaning to do it. She has to hold onto something and Emily doesn’t seem to mind it.

Lindsey opens her eyes just for a moment, and that’s long enough. Emily’s not looking at her, but the sensation and the _image_ send Lindsey over the edge anyway. She digs her feet into the bed to keep from clamping her thighs around Emily’s head, but she doesn’t realize at first that she’s been digging her nails into Emily’s scalp--not until Emily groans quietly against her and sends another belated shock up and down Lindsey’s spine.

For a moment when Emily pulls away and sits up on her knees, Lindsey hesitates, afraid of the awkward silence. Then she gets distracted by Emily’s shoulders and realizes she can do more than just look, and the moment passes. Even with her legs still wobbly, she sits up on her knees and grabs Emily around the waist. She’s not sure how else to do it so she ends up more or less tossing Emily back against the pillows, and Emily laughs breathlessly before Lindsey bears down on her. At the last second she remembers that she can’t give into the urge to kiss Emily and redirects to Emily’s neck instead.

“No visible hickeys,” Emily says, “rule number two.”

“We’re constantly in and out of locker rooms,” Lindsey says, reaching up to pinch one of Emily’s nipples between her thumb and forefinger, “what’s _not_ visible?”

“Figure it out,” Emily gasps, and Lindsey bites her shoulder.

Lindsey rocks her hips into Emily’s until Emily gets frustrated enough to push Lindsey away and pull off her track pants and underwear all in one go. It’s not what Lindsey was expecting to get out of teasing Emily like that, but she certainly doesn’t hate it. She sits back on her heels with her hands on Emily’s thighs and suddenly it all hits her at once.

She really likes Emily. She really _likes_ Emily, and Emily’s just here to get laid, and Lindsey knows that. The reality check still feels like a gut-punch, though. 

“You just gonna look?” Emily asks, her voice fucked up and hoarse, and Lindsey snaps out of it.

She wants to ask Emily what she likes but the words die in her throat. She remembers watching Emily touch herself, though, so it’s not like she doesn’t have somewhere to start. She drops down on top of Emily, bracing herself with one elbow so she doesn’t crush Emily completely. It’s awkward being that close with nothing to do with her mouth, so she ends up kissing Emily’s neck as she smooths her hand along Emily’s abs and lingers there.

What probably feels like intentional teasing to Emily is nervousness on Lindsey’s part. It’s not that she hasn’t done this enough, just that she wants to be good at it, specifically that she wants to be good for Emily. The barest brush of her fingertips between Emily’s legs makes Emily’s hips jerk up, so Lindsey only gives her slow, careful pressure at first, working her way up to slow circles with two fingertips, trailing her lips down to Emily’s collarbone where she bites again, gently.

Emily squirms under her and Lindsey uses the weight of her upper body to hold Emily in place. She can’t believe they’re doing what they’re doing, especially when she realizes again that it’s Emily who she knows so well, and that making Emily feel good is turning her on again even though she’s already come twice. 

“You’re not gonna break me,” Emily squeaks, slinging a leg up over Lindsey’s hip, “you can give me more.”

“Do you ever shut up,” Lindsey laughs against Emily’s neck, and she’s not even surprised when Emily pushes her hips up into Lindsey’s hand. 

“Only when someone makes me,” Emily says, and Lindsey wants to cover Emily’s mouth with hers but she can’t, so instead she sits back on her heels. Emily drops her leg, placing both her feet on the mattress and pouting at Lindsey as if she’s about to stop. Instead, before Emily can open her mouth again, Lindsey places one hand on Emily’s bent knee and brings her other hand back between Emily’s legs. 

Lindsey believes Emily that she can handle it, but she’s still slow and careful anyway. She starts with one finger, and only adds the second when Emily has relaxed. When she does, Emily tosses her head to the side, biting her lips, and it’s the hottest thing Lindsey’s ever seen or imagined. Emily pulls at the sheets when Lindsey flexes her wrist, but she _is_ quiet. She wasn’t lying about that. Lindsey doesn’t feel smug, though. She realizes the only time she’s ever heard Emily moan was when Emily was going down on her and decides that she’d like to hear it again with a clearer mind. 

She drops her free hand from Emily’s knee to join her other hand between Emily’s legs. She uses her thumb the way she’d used her fingertips earlier and Emily’s hips jerk off the bed. When Emily groans, Lindsey makes another circle with her thumb, this time more firmly. 

“Fuck,” Emily wheezes, and Lindsey grins to herself. Emily doesn’t see it, but the relief that Lindsey feels to see and hear that Emily feels good is   
__immense_. It’s the same feeling she gets after she scores a goal. 

She doesn’t stop. It doesn’t take long once she gets a rhythm going, and even though she could have gone on forever it’s a relief in a way to see that Emily wanted this as badly as she did. This time when Emily comes she twists like she did into Lindsey’s neck, but into a pillow, hiding her face. The sound she makes into it is muffled but real, and Lindsey wants to really hear it. 

When Lindsey pulls back, Emily opens her eyes and turns pink. 

“Sorry,” Emily says, “I’m kind of a one-and-done, especially when it’s...when it’s good.”

Lindsey grins at her. She can’t think of anything else to do. Emily just called her _good at sex_. That’s a world they’re both living in now. 

“We can go again for you if you want though,” Emily says, and Lindsey shakes her head, flopping onto her stomach next to Emily even though she’s tempted to lie on top of her. That’s not how this is supposed to work. She knows that much. 

“I’m good,” she says, and Emily slips off of the bed, collecting her clothes and putting them back on piece by piece. 

She doesn’t put her underwear back on. Lindsey notices. 

“Well,” Emily says, “um…”

She trails off. then leans over and taps Lindsey’s ass.

“Good game,” she says, and by the time Lindsey has opened her eyes from cracking up, Emily is gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Kelley says.

It takes Emily twenty minutes to steel herself to see Lindsey again the next morning. 

It’s Lindsey’s turn to drive them to practice. Emily really does consider finding a way to opt out, but she can’t do that without making things weird, and for right now things are only weird in her head. It’s not _Lindsey’s_ fault that she’s in her feelings. She’s the one who suggested actually having sex, knowing full well how she feels about Lindsey and how easy it is for her to ruin herself over someone.

She was always just teetering on the edge of falling in love with Lindsey. She’s known that since she was eighteen. She’s always been like this, always been quick to fall for the same kinds of girls, and nobody has ever checked all her boxes like Lindsey does. But she didn’t have to light the match. She could have just sat in her little room filled with gasoline for years and been fine.

She did light the match, though. She lit the match in that hotel room when she suggested that Lindsey get herself off. She brought in a fucking flamethrower when she was stupid enough last night to escalate things again. So if everything in her life is on fire this morning, she has nobody else to blame--and she doesn’t want to make _Lindsey_ feel bad about it. That’s how she ends up slipping into the passenger side of Lindsey’s car, smoothie in hand, trying not to think about where her mouth was twelve hours ago.

“Morning,” Lindsey says, “aux cord is all yours.”

“You have Bluetooth,” Emily says, “there’s no aux cord, you dork.”

“Aux cord privileges revoked,” Lindsey replies, and for a moment, Emily feels like things can actually go back to normal.

Practice is fine. Lindsey gets in a different ice bath and Emily doesn’t overthink it and that’s fine, too. Emily only looks up at her phone once, but it happens to be when Lindsey’s getting out of the ice bath, dripping wet, her spandex shorts clinging like they’ve been painted on, and Emily gets caught staring. She’s thinking about the crest of Lindsey’s hipbone, thinking about a world where she can leave a mark there, wondering if Lindsey would be sensitive there, when AD kicks her leg under the water.

“Linds,” Emily blurts, “nice wedgie,” and the room erupts in laughter. Lindsey tosses a wet towel onto Emily’s face and nobody but AD thinks twice about it, but AD-- of course AD _knows_. AD probably knew before anything had even happened between Emily and Lindsey.

“Not everyone can have their shit together,” Emily grumbles at her, and AD raises her eyebrows, but she doesn’t say anything.

It’s easier after that. Emily and Lindsey don’t talk about it. Lindsey--whose apartment is directly above Emily’s--comes around like normal, watches TV with her, then goes up to her own apartment like nothing ever happened. She doesn’t initiate anything, and Emily doesn’t either, even if she wants to. They don’t need to have sex every day. They shouldn’t have sex every day. They shouldn’t be having sex with each other at all, and maybe Lindsey gets that. Maybe she regrets it. Maybe she’s done and doesn’t want to be rude about it.

That’s what Emily’s thinking four days later when Lindsey knocks on her door.

“Oh,” Emily says, “what’s up, did you leave something down here?”

Lindsey blinks at her.

“No,” she says, “it’s like, eleven thirty.”

Emily doesn’t have a response for that. Lindsey comes inside, crowding Emily back into her own apartment and closing the door behind her. She’s so _big_, it’s all Emily can do to keep from giving her a long once-over. She wants to; Lindsey’s wearing pajama shorts and a tank top and it’s too cold for that, and she’s definitely not wearing a bra but Emily’s also definitely not looking.

“Are you gonna make me say it?” Lindsey says, and Emily’s stomach drops.

Lindsey wants her again. It feels impossible. Even when it was happening the first time it felt impossible, like a dream, like something that could absolutely never happen again, but it has. Lindsey is standing here in Emily’s apartment, wanting her, out loud. It feels like a different Lindsey than the one Emily sees during the daytime, but she doesn’t have time to unpack that thought and she doesn’t want to.

“I don’t want to assume,” Emily says, which is true, maybe the only true thing she’s said to Lindsey in days.

“It’s a booty call,” Lindsey says, “but I’m chivalrous and didn’t make you come upstairs this time.”

Emily knows Lindsey well enough to hear the nervousness in her voice and notice how the set of her shoulders has changed. She’s insecure all of a sudden, so she must be afraid Emily doesn’t want this, and Emily only knows one way to fix that. Two, counting the option she would never take, which is to say it out loud.

She doesn’t speak, just sinks to her knees in front of Lindsey in her foyer and reaches for her. She slides her hands up under Lindsey’s tank top and pushes it up until she can get her mouth on Lindsey’s stomach. Lindsey stands frozen for a second before she reaches down and places her hands gently on Emily’s shoulders. Emily wants Lindsey’s hands in her hair. She wants Lindsey to--she wants a lot of things. For now she pulls the waist of Lindsey’s sleep shorts down on one side just far enough to get her mouth on Lindsey’s hip, where she’d been fixated the other day. She starts to work a bruise into Lindsey’s skin, and finally Lindsey’s hands move to cradle the back of Emily’s head.

“Thought you said no visible hickeys,” Lindsey gasps above her, and Emily smiles against her hip.

“I’m not sucking that hard,” she says, “but I can if you want.”

“God,” Lindsey says, “I hate you.”

Emily trails her open mouth along Lindsey’s abs and slides one hand along the inside of Lindsey’s leg, all the way up her thigh to touch her over her shorts. She must not be wearing underwear; Emily can feel the warmth there and has to smile against Lindsey’s skin when Lindsey’s fingers stiffen on the back of her neck.

“Couch, I think,” Emily says. Her knees are starting to ache, and as happy as she would be to stay there all night she knows Lindsey would make her stop eventually. Emily leads Lindsey to the couch with Lindsey’s hand in hers and tries to ignore how soft that is, how it makes her feel. This isn’t supposed to be romantic, she reminds herself, and she reminds Lindsey, too, when she sits on the couch and tugs Lindsey into her lap.

“I’m too big,” Lindsey mumbles. She’s holding herself up on her knees with one on either side of Emily’s thighs.

“No you’re not,” Emily says, using her arms around Lindsey’s waist to pull Lindsey tight against her. Lindsey tilts her head down and Emily almost kisses her before she remembers the stupid fucking rule. The rule that _she_ made up. It’s not stupid, not really, it’s the only thing keeping her from losing her mind over Lindsey completely, but it’s hard to avoid. Lindsey breathes against her mouth and Emily ducks away to kiss Lindsey’s neck.

“Thought we said not above the neck,” Lindsey murmurs. Emily can feel Lindsey’s voice against her mouth. 

“This isn’t above the neck,” Emily says, “this is the neck. Are you complaining?”

“No,” Lindsey says, tightening her grip on Emily’s shoulders.

The other thing that’s hard to avoid is leaving a mark. Emily wants to. She wants Lindsey’s neck to be completely fucked up, she wants Lindsey to walk into practice tomorrow and for everyone to know, immediately, that she’s fucking someone. It’s a rush, the idea of being able to be possessive about Lindsey, but that’s not what this is. That was her rule, too. Mostly because she doesn’t have concealer. What it means is that she has to be careful, and she is, trailing her open mouth along Lindsey’s throat without using her teeth.

Lindsey is very still until Emily dips her head and drags her tongue along Lindsey’s collarbone. When she does, Lindsey rolls her hips into Emily’s, and both of them exhale harshly. Emily pushes her hands back under Lindsey’s shirt, over her back, and Lindsey crosses her arms and pulls her tank top over her head. She looks shy like this, topless in Emily’s lap, and it makes Emily’s chest ache.

She ignores the urge to tell Lindsey how she looks. She does it with her hands instead, bringing them up to cup Lindsey’s breasts, shifting under Lindsey so that it’s easier for Lindsey to rock down into her lap. Lindsey does, but it’s halting and awkward, and Emily realizes this position is never going to work--not like this, not without kissing Lindsey, and God she wants Lindsey’s tongue in her mouth.

Without overthinking it she twists and tips Lindsey back onto the couch. Lindsey props her head up on the arm of the couch and Emily tugs Lindsey’s shorts over her hips. As she suspected, Lindsey was wearing nothing--no bra, no underwear, and now she’s just naked on Emily’s couch, a couch they’ve hung out on hundreds of times. 

“I probably should have taken you to bed,” Emily says out loud.

“Too late,” Lindsey says, but she’s bright red, and Emily realizes she probably worries about being too big for the couch, which wasn’t the point at all. Emily braces herself by holding onto the top of the couch with her left hand while she moves her right hand along Lindsey’s thigh. She did kind of leave a mark by Lindsey’s hipbone, but it’s not bad, and probably nobody will notice it. When Emily’s hand finally slips between Lindsey’s legs, Lindsey drops one leg off of the edge of the couch to give her the best angle she can possibly have, and Emily swallows hard. 

It’s so easy with Lindsey. Lindsey, who Emily knows is shy about this, who Emily knows hasn’t done much of this. Lindsey trusts her so much and she’s fucking it up every second by almost falling in love with her every day. The problem is, if Lindsey wants this, Emily doesn’t have it in her to deny her anything. 

“C’mon,” Lindsey says, and Emily zeroes in on her again, on Lindsey’s long eyelashes, the rise and fall of her chest.

“Never knew you were this impatient,” Emily says, but she gives Lindsey what she wants anyway, curling her finger so that Lindsey’s hips buck up into her hand. She’s curious about whether or not she can get Lindsey off like this, without using her mouth or her other hand. It becomes clear pretty quickly that’s not going to be enough. It would be for her, but Lindsey’s not her, Lindsey’s using the foot on the ground to push her hips up into Emily’s hand and biting her lips and if Emily looks smug it’s not her fault.

She doesn’t wait for Lindsey to ask for more, because she knows they’ll be waiting all night. She slides a second finger into Lindsey and grins to herself when Lindsey throws her head back, arching her chest away from the couch. Lindsey was thinking about this. Emily can tell. In another world she would make a joke about that, but she’s afraid of what will come out if she opens her mouth.

She works Lindsey over with two fingers, curling on her way out, using her thumb on the way in to give Lindsey more friction. She’s never gotten to watch Lindsey come, and she’s hyper-aware of that now. The first time, her face was tucked into Lindsey’s neck. The second time her face was between Lindsey’s thighs. This time, she stays kneeling as Lindsey tightens around her, and the more resistance she meets the more careful she is to keep her rhythm. Lindsey is almost silent when she comes, but her face is red with the effort of keeping it that way. Her breath hitches in her chest and she claws at the couch, and Emily wishes it was her back instead.

“Fuck,” Lindsey says when she finally exhales, “Jesus--Emily--fuck.”

It’s not like Emily’s never heard Lindsey curse before. Lindsey curses _plenty_ on the field, but hearing her curse like this brings Emily to the point of being uncomfortably turned on. She wipes her hand on her shorts and Lindsey finally opens her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I can get your clothes,” Emily says, and Lindsey shakes her head, immediately uncrossing her arms to reach for Emily.

“Take yours off,” Lindsey says instead.

“Thought you just came down here to get off,” Emily jokes--or half-jokes, she’s sort of serious, she didn’t expect or let herself hope that part of what Lindsey wanted was to return the favor.

“Shut up,” Lindsey says, for the thousandth time.

“You don’t have to,” Emily says, but she pulls her shirt over her head and unhooks her bra anyway.

“I’m going to tape your mouth shut,” Lindsey says, and Emily laughs. She’s still laughing when Lindsey pushes her to her feet.

“What,” Emily says, “no handcuffs?”

That’s how she ends up pinned to the wall in her living room with one of Lindsey’s hands down her shorts and the other covering her mouth. She wants to keep it together, wants to make Lindsey work for it, but she can’t. The solid length of Lindsey’s body pressed against hers is already so much. She doesn’t have enough leverage to move, just clings to Lindsey’s shoulders while Lindsey’s fingers slide against her. It would be embarrassing if she had the dignity left to be embarrassed, but there’s no dignity left. How can there be, when she was already so obviously turned on the second Lindsey’s hand slid into her shorts? 

She comes like that, slumped against the wall, holding herself up with her nails digging into Lindsey’s shoulders. It only took a matter of minutes and nothing but the pressure of Lindsey’s fingertips. She starts to blush when she opens her eyes, but once she registers the look on Lindsey’s face as she takes her hand away from Emily’s mouth. The sudden shyness that washes over Lindsey is so obvious. She looks like she thinks she did something wrong.

“That was hot,” Emily blurts, somehow keeping herself upright on wobbly legs. Lindsey’s wall has gone back up, but she does smile a little bit when she steps back and moves to get her clothes.

“Even without the handcuffs?” Lindsey jokes, and Emily exhales on a shaky laugh.

“I don’t have any,” Emily says, “too paranoid about actually locking myself into them.”

“You would,” Lindsey says, “that’s fair.”

Emily watches Lindsey get dressed and lets herself live in a fantasy world where she can drag Lindsey into the shower or into bed instead. She only lets herself live in that fantasy until Lindsey is dressed again, and then she chases it away, along with all her other thoughts. For a few seconds, her mind is mercilessly silent and blank.

It doesn’t last.

Practice the next day is brutal. It’s one of the times Emily feels _bad_ after practice. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens, just like with any other job. Some days no matter how hard you work you feel replaceable, you feel like you’re underachieving your potential, and nobody understands that in exactly the way that Emily feels it—not here. Rose gets it, the unique and horrible pressure of being a first overall pick, the way that a bad day feels inexcusable. Emily has gotten used to the pressure by now and she knows how to look at it from the outside and see it for what it is. She knows it’s not rational. 

The last thing that Emily needs, after a practice like that, is to go home and sit by herself. It’s why she agrees to go out with everyone even though she’s tired enough that every bone in her body wants to take a bath and crawl into bed. Usually she’s glad she went out, but this time she regrets it, and she regrets it quickly. It takes her a few minutes to realize that the reason she regrets it is that usually she leans on Lindsey to distract her, but now being close to Lindsey just reminds her of another thing she’s fucked up.

“Linds,” Ellie says, leaning over their table in the crowded bar, “how’s Tinder going?”

Emily tosses back half of her beer at once.

“It’s fine,” Lindsey says coolly, “you know. It’s Tinder.”

“Any good matches?” Caitlin asks. Lindsey shrugs noncommittally, and Emily does her best not to be offended. The point is that they don’t want anyone at the table to know they matched, but Emily wouldn’t have _hated_ for Lindsey to say ‘yes,’ even if they would hound her for details.

“Lemme see,” Caitlin says, holding her hand out and opening and closing it, waiting for the phone.

“No,” Lindsey says. Emily forces herself to inhale through her nose and exhale out of her mouth.

“C’mon,” Caitlin says, “you know we’re not gonna drop it.”

“I’m dating around,” Lindsey says, “and it’s going fine, that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

Dating around.

That’s not exactly how Emily would describe what they’re doing. Actually it’s not even in the same zip code as what they’ve been doing, and it makes her think, makes her wonder if Lindsey really is going on dates. She can’t imagine when that would be happening, but it’s theoretically possible. Lindsey could be dating around. She could be going on dates and coming back and showing up at Emily’s door to get laid. It doesn’t seem like Lindsey at all, but Emily’s been fooled before. The real problem is, there’s nothing actually wrong with dating around, if that’s what Lindsey’s doing. Emily shouldn’t get to be upset about it. Of course, that doesn’t stop her.

Emily gets a hickey in Philadelphia. It’s ironic, given that Lindsey is the one who’s been so concerned about it lately, that Lindsey is the one who eventually breaks the rule. The night before the game, Rose, Sam and Lindsey park themselves in Emily and Mal’s room.

“We should go out,” Mal says.

“Famous last words,” Sam says, “I want to be able to run tomorrow. Plus, if Dawn sees us leave--”

“It’s seven,” Mal says, “we can go out for like, two hours, we just won’t drink. Don’t you want to look around?”

“No,” Emily says, “it’s Philadelphia, what is there to see?”

“Don’t let Carli hear you say that,” Rose cautions, “she’ll kneecap you.”

“The Great Horan will protect me,” Emily replies, and Lindsey rolls her eyes.

“The Great Horan will not get involved in that,” Lindsey says, “but if we’re going out, I need a half hour to do my hair and makeup.”

“Well I need to shower,” Rose says, “so you have to use this bathroom, not ours.”

Mal agrees to do Sam’s makeup for the low price of a bag of flavor-blasted Goldfish smuggled from the airport under Dawn’s watchful eye, leaving Emily and Lindsey alone in Emily’s room.

“We’re not hooking up,” Lindsey says immediately, “just to be clear, I do actually need to do my hair and makeup.”

“Maybe I didn’t even want to hook up,” Emily says, “don’t be presumptuous.” 

Lindsey scrunches up her face. They stand there and stare at each other silently for another ten seconds before they both burst into laughter.

“Come here,” Lindsey says, backing into the bathroom. Emily follows her in and closes the door behind her, wishing hotel bathrooms had locks more often. 

Lindsey presses Emily against the sink, shoving her hands up under Emily’s shirt, and Emily’s body responds instantly. She sways forward until their faces are perilously close together, and for a moment Emily considers throwing everything out the window and dragging Lindsey into a kiss. If they were in Portland, if it were the off-season, she might even have done it, but with their friends all around them and a game tomorrow, she won’t do it. She’s not _that_ stupid. Lindsey’s nose brushes against hers and Emily exhales against Lindsey’s mouth, tempting fate. Lindsey pushes her harder into the sink and Emily can hear the quiet sound escape her lips before Lindsey even moves. 

Lindsey reaches up and tips Emily’s head to one side with her hand on Emily’s chin. She’s startlingly gentle about it, and Emily’s thrown off, enough that she’s unable to brace herself for the feeling of Lindsey’s mouth on her neck. Lindsey presses a leg between Emily’s thighs and licks a trail from Emily’s collarbone to her jaw. It’s technically above the neck but Emily’s not going to say anything about it, not while she’s just trying to keep herself upright on wobbly knees. 

“Linds,” Emily says, “we don’t have time, you—you know Sam’s gonna kick Mal out the second she brings out the fake eyelashes.”

Lindsey ignores her. She tugs at the collar of Emily’s t-shirt and uncovers more skin around Emily’s neck and shoulder, skin she immediately puts her lips to. Emily clutches Lindsey’s shoulders, rutting her hips against Lindsey’s leg shamelessly, chasing the kind of hasty orgasm she can usually only achieve by herself. She’s focused on that, on how close she is and how easy it would be to get off if Lindsey would just bend her knee a little, and not paying attention to what Lindsey’s mouth is doing until it’s too late. Lindsey’s sucking hard at her shoulder and Emily knows she should stop her but she doesn’t want to, it feels good, it all feels good and she _wants_ that mark, wants to look in the mirror and remember Lindsey presses against her. So she doesn’t stop Lindsey and Lindsey doesn’t stop, and Emily is right on the edge of coming when the door to the hotel room opens. 

“Guys?” Mal says after a moment, and Lindsey disentangles herself from Emily with haste. 

Emily straightens her shirt and Lindsey fumbles with her toiletry bag. She gestures wildly at Emily, who kicks the bathroom door open and hopes she’s not too pink despite the ache between her legs. 

“Sup,” she says. 

“Why’d you close the door?” Mal asks, and Emily blanks completely. 

From behind her, as she applies mascara, Lindsey makes the save of the century: “She said the acoustics are better that way. She’s been torturing me with her so called vocals this entire time.”

Mal buys it. Emily survives, somehow, but it haunts her when she crawls into bed that night. She dreams about Lindsey, and when she wakes up at four in the morning she only remembers snippets. She doesn’t need to remember details, though. She knows what she was dreaming about. 

She spends breakfast trying not to fixate on Lindsey’s hands. Then, on the bus to the game, Lindsey leans over and rests her cheek on Emily’s shoulder, and Emily stops thinking entirely.

Only Lindsey ever turns her brain off like that. This is the first time it’s happened outside the context of sex, though, and even Emily can see that means something serious, that means something different. She feels that same quiet right before kickoff.

“Em,” Lindsey calls, and Emily’s brain shuts off completely. She twists around from her spot in the defense huddle so that she can make eye contact with Lindsey, who holds her arms out to start their handshake. Emily joins her in it and the rest of the field melts away, just for a moment; the pressure of playing well, replacing Kelley, proving that she belongs, nothing remains but Lindsey and the comfort of a handshake they’ve done a thousand times.

Lindsey turns away and the sound of the crowd comes back.

It’s all Emily can do after the game to act normal. Lindsey slings an arm around her shoulders and Emily slings an arm around her waist until they get to the tunnel. She holds it together on the bus while Lindsey dozes with one AirPod in, and then, finally, when she’s alone in her own hotel bathroom, she makes a decision. 

“Hi,” Emily says, when Alex swings open the door.

“Oh,” Alex says, “hi, I know you’re not here for me, let me get Kel.”

“Maybe I’m here to hang out with you,” Emily says indignantly, and Alex ignores her. Kelley walks with her to CVS, which is the closest and first place that she could think of.

“Do you need anything,” Kelley says, “or is this a crisis?”

“I’m going to get trail mix,” Emily decides out loud, and Kelley matches her step for step, crossing her arms and pulling her sweatshirt down over her hands.

“Oh, this _is_ a crisis,” Kelley says, and Emily grimaces.

She waits until they’re inside to actually talk about it, and Kelley doesn’t press her. That’s one of the reasons Emily went to Kelley instead of Rose or Sam or Mal--Kelley will wait for her to get it together, and Kelley will let her talk about it in the fluorescent lighting of the cereal and snack aisle in CVS.

“So I’ve been hooking up with Lindsey,” Emily says, reaching for a box of off-brand Cheerios, “and I think I’m like, losing my mind.”

“You think banging Lindsey has caused you to lose your mind?” Kelley asks, and Emily glances at her. 

“Not exactly,” she says. “Well, yeah I guess. It’s just hooking up, like friends with benefits. But we don’t kiss and I want to kiss her constantly, I think about it all the time.”

“Back up,” Kelley says, as Emily adds a box of fruit snacks to her basket, “what do you mean you don’t kiss?”

“It’s a rule,” Emily says, “no mouths above the neck, to avoid feelings.”

“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Kelley says. Emily rounds the corner into the candy aisle so that Kelley won’t see her blushing. 

“Whose idea was _that?_” Kelley asks, and Emily scrunches up her nose. 

“Um, mine,” Emily admits. 

At first, Kelley is silent. Emily grabs a box of Junior Mints and turns around guiltily. When she makes eye contact, Kelley bursts into giggles, and Emily is forced to suffer through it, shifting her weight from foot to foot while Kelley braces herself on the shelving. 

“Oh my God,” Kelley says, wheezing, “I mean, maybe you did lose it. Isn’t it weird to not kiss while you’re _doing_ it?”

“No,” Emily lies indignantly. 

“So what, you just like, make eye contact while you’re, like—“ Kelley makes an obscene gesture and Emily slaps at her hands. 

“Stop it,” Emily hisses.

Kelley obliges, but she’s still giggling, following Emily into the As Seen On TV aisle. 

“Well, did it work?” Kelley asks, and Emily sighs. 

“No,” she says, “maybe for Lindsey, I think, but I had a crush on her before this, so...not kissing was supposed to help keep it from getting worse.”

“And it didn’t,” Kelley clarifies. When Emily doesn’t answer, she continues, “it did get worse.”

“Yeah,” Emily admits quietly. Kelley, to her credit, doesn’t make another joke. It’s weird to think about things with Lindsey in the context of ‘worse,’ because Emily’s life has definitely gotten better since they started sleeping together, even if it’s gotten more complicated, too. 

“So kiss her,” Kelley says, “you’re young, Son. You gotta kiss the girls you wanna kiss. Kiss her like an adult and ask her out. She can clearly tolerate more of you than anyone else.”

“You tolerate me,” Emily says, but Kelley ignores the joke. 

“If you really can’t fathom making a move,” Kelley says, “then you should stop sleeping with her.”

Emily knows she’s right. She already knew that, but she needed Kelley to say it, and now that she has it feels more real. She can feel a plan taking shape in her mind, but it’s not one that she likes.

“I guess you’re right,” she says, “she’ll be sad, though, but--I don’t know. I want things to be okay with us. She’s my best friend. And if I ask her out and she says no I know we won’t be fun anymore.”

Kelley puts an arm around Emily’s shoulders and squeezes. She’s serious now, and Emily hates that, hates how it makes her feel like she’s on the verge of tears in the middle of the store. Tears over _Lindsey_. It’s all so stupid.

“Listen,” Kelley says, “I’m telling you this because I love and trust you, so listen carefully. I have had sex with my friends before and things turned out totally fine. Normal? No. But fine. It’s not going to be the same whether you ask her out or not. So, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, you need to nut up.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Emily says. “Also, I’m allergic to cashews.”

“I’m just saying you need to do something,” Kelley says. “You’ll figure it out. You’re smarter than you look.”

She reaches for Emily’s shoulder and tugs her t-shirt a little to the side, uncovering the hickey that Lindsey left, the hickey that Emily forgot. Her sports bra for the game had covered it, but the bra she’s wearing now doesn’t. She swats Kelley’s hand away and straightens her shirt, almost dropping her stuff in the process.

“Let’s get you some concealer,” Kelley laughs, and steers her back the way they came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again thank you guys so much for the comments, they're fun to read!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think we need to stop sleeping together.”

“I think we should stop.”

Lindsey clears her throat. 

“I think we need to stop sleeping together.”

She wrinkles her nose at herself in the mirror. Every formulation of what she’s trying to say comes out horribly, like it’s scripted. It’s not scripted, but it _is_ rehearsed. She opens her mouth to try it again, and gives up, rubbing her temples. No matter how hard she tries, she’s not going to be able to make this sound like she means it. Because the fact is...she doesn’t mean it. She knows that she should. She knows what the right thing to do is, she can list the reasons why they should stop sleeping together, but none of that changes how she feels about it. And how she feels about it is very simple: she doesn’t want to stop. 

It’s not even about the sex. If it were just about the sex it would be easy for her to stop. She likes sex--she loves sex with Emily--but she can take care of that stuff by herself. If it were just about the sex, she wouldn’t need to stop doing it anyway.

It would also be easier if she could even fathom saying the sentence, “I like you.”

She’s never said it before. Even back when she was exclusively attempting to date men, even back when she was chasing around high school boys who were terrified of or disinterested in her. The risk was too high, and they weren’t her best friends. They were just boys. Emily is so much more important than that.

That’s what Lindsey’s thinking when Emily’s name pops up on her screen twenty minutes later. They’re back in Portland, so it’s not shocking that Lindsey would get a Tinder notification. She’s gotten matches before, even though she hasn’t swiped since the day she got the app. After she matched with Emily she never bothered to swipe again. What could possibly be more convenient?

The Tinder notification is from Emily. It’s like Lindsey’s embarrassing mirror speeches summoned her.

**Emily**: come down here  
**Emily**: and i’ll make u come down here ;)  
**Emily**: bada bing

“I hate you,” Lindsey mumbles under her breath, but she reapplies her deodorant and slips into flip flops and heads downstairs anyway.

When she knocks, Emily opens the door and backs up to let Lindsey in. Lindsey closes the door behind her and Emily starts to act as if she’s getting limber for a run--stretching her hands high over her head, then bending over to touch her toes.

“Sorry,” she says, “hold on, I wanna be prepared.”

“Prepared for _what_?” Lindsey says suspiciously, “what are you planning on doing to me?”

Emily cracks her knuckles.

“Nothing about this is sexy,” Lindsey says. It’s true, until Emily’s expression changes. All the mirth and mischief leaves her face at once. She looks vulnerable and soft in the light of her living room, standing barefoot in low sweats and a tank top that exposes her shoulders and collarbones. There’s a spot there where Lindsey left a mark. They never talked about that, either.

“To be honest,” Emily says, “I wasn’t sure you’d actually show up.”

Lindsey has never wanted anything in her life more than she wants to kiss Emily then.

Not a roster spot. Not an Olympic medal. Not a World Cup trophy.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she squeaks, and Emily breaks eye contact, blushing faintly at the tops of her cheeks and reaching up to re-do her bun.

“I dunno,” she says, “it’s--it was dumb, nevermind. C’mere.”

Lindsey does as she’s asked. Emily leads her to the bedroom, an experience that’s beginning to feel familiar. She never links her fingers with Lindsey, but Emily taking her hand feels romantic anyway, regardless of the fact that Lindsey’s held hands more tightly with their friends plenty of times. There’s no light on in Emily’s room, so Lindsey stands there and blinks until her eyes adjust. In the meantime, Emily pulls her shirt over her head, and this time Lindsey doesn’t need prompting. She reaches for Emily, who steps into her arms, and fumbles with the clasp on her bra. 

She’s expecting Emily to make fun of her. Instead, Emily leans into her, breathing against her jaw, and Lindsey’s legs go weak. She’s surprised and a little bit panicked by how turned on she is by this, by something this simple, by Emily standing quiet and pliant against her, waiting for Lindsey to touch her.

This has to be the last time.

She doesn’t say it. She gets the clasp unhooked and Emily lets her push the straps of her bra over her shoulders. Lindsey gets distracted by the sight of her hands skimming over Emily’s shoulders, and Emily bumps her hips forward against Lindsey’s to get her moving again. Lindsey tugs her own shirt over her head and Emily pushes her gently back towards the bed. 

“You gave me a hickey last time,” Emily says, straddling Lindsey’s hips and sliding her hand down the front of Lindsey’s sports bra. Lindsey sighs, placing her hands on Emily’s thighs, and closes her eyes. It’s hard to focus on forming words while Emily’s pinching a nipple between her thumb and forefinger, but she manages.

“You can give me one if you want,” she grits out, “make it even.”

Emily hovers over her and considers the offer. Her hair is already a mess again and Lindsey hasn’t even touched it. 

“Do you have concealer?” Emily asks. While she does, she moves so that she’s resting between Lindsey’s legs instead of straddling Lindsey’s hips. Lindsey has never felt comfortable like that; with guys she always wanted to be on top just to avoid this _specific_ position, but she realizes she’s never felt like that with Emily. She likes the weight of Emily resting against her. She likes that Emily has access to all of her, like this.

“Of course I do,” Lindsey snorts derisively. 

“Well, I didn’t,” Emily shrugs, and Lindsey is about to apologize when Emily moves again. This time she places her hand on Lindsey’s chest, and when she leans down to kiss Lindsey’s neck her fingertips rest just at the base of Lindsey’s throat. 

Lindsey swallows and Emily noses along her neck, picking her spot. She ends sucking against Lindsey’s skin just below her ear, which is really close to her jaw, which is really close to her mouth, which is where she wants Emily’s mouth the most. She squirms under Emily when the pressure starts to hurt, and Emily grins and sits back, swiping her fingers across the mark she left.

“Pretty good,” she says.

“You can’t even tell yet,” Lindsey says, and Emily slides back along the bed, sliding her hand from Lindsey’s chest over her abs. Lindsey sits up on her elbows and Emily exhales against her stomach.

“You don’t have to flex,” Emily jokes.

“You’re into it,” Lindsey blurts boldly, and Emily shakes her head, laughing.

She’s not laughing when she tugs Lindsey’s pants and underwear down. Lindsey’s not, either. She almost kicks Emily in her haste to kick her pants away, but Emily doesn’t even hesitate. She presses Lindsey’s thighs apart with her hands, and just before she drops her head again, she makes eye contact with Lindsey. 

“Fuck,” Lindsey gasps. 

She ends up tugging Emily’s hair out of her ponytail so that she can get her hands in Emily’s hair. She’s not pulling or pushing, just holding on, but Emily responds as if Lindsey’s egged her on. Lindsey is overwhelmed immediately, distracted by how soft Emily’s hair is between her fingers, by the feeling of Emily’s hands on her thighs and the insistent heat of Emily’s mouth.

It’s the first time that Lindsey’s ever gotten off without someone using their hands at all. All it takes is Emily’s mouth--she’s _that_ good at this--and a little bit of time to set Lindsey off. It’s not surprising, it’s not like Lindsey didn’t know that Emily was good at sex, but she’s still stunned when she comes hard enough that Emily has to use the hands on Lindsey’s thighs to keep from being suffocated by them.

She drops one of her hands to Emily’s chin when she gets too sensitive for Emily to keep going. She gets the idea that Emily was content to stay down there forever, and although Lindsey’s pretty confident she wouldn’t be able to come again so close back to back, she was also fairly confident she couldn’t get off like that in the first place. Emily sits up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. The look she gives Lindsey when she sits back on her heels is as soft as it is smug, and Lindsey isn’t thinking when she reaches for Emily again.

She pulls Emily up with a hand on her shoulder and then she frames Emily’s face in her hands and drags Emily into a kiss. Emily kisses her back, braced with a hand on either side of Lindsey’s head, and it takes Lindsey almost fifteen full seconds of that before her brain kicks back in and she breaks the kiss.

“Shit,” she says, dropping her hands, “I’m sorry, that was stupid.”

She can still feel Emily’s lips if she thinks about it. She’s expecting Emily to make a joke, something about the orgasm being so good that it scrambled her brains, but Emily doesn’t say anything at all. She hovers over Lindsey, her hair falling around her face, her mouth still partway open.

“We should probably just forget that happened, right?” Lindsey says, “I mean we never said what we would do if we...did break a rule.”

Emily sits back again, on her heels like before. This time is different. This time there’s no smile on her face. She has her head turned away, and with her hair down Lindsey can’t really see Emliy’s expression.

“Maybe we should forget all of it happened,” Emily says quietly.

Lindsey’s heart sinks. It suddenly feels extremely urgent for her to get dressed. She knows she’s focusing on that instead of dealing with the way her hands have gone clammy, that same rush of adrenaline that comes with having a coach scream at her, the looming guilt that comes with knowing she’s done something wrong. 

She wants to run. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles when she slides off of Emily’s bed.

“No worries,” Emily replies easily, too easily, and Lindsey barely makes it back out into the hall before she starts to cry.

-

Emily stands in the shower for too long, long enough that her limbs start to feel heavy. She’s trying not to imagine Kelley’s reaction to the story, assuming Emily would tell her, or could get through it without bursting into tears.

Kelley would call her stupid again. She’d be right (again).

Emily had the perfect shot. It felt so much like the anticipation she feels on the field, the same kind of tension that lays just under an inevitable goal or a chance that’s going to be dangerous. All she needed to do was tell Lindsey no.

No, we don’t need to forget.

No, you don’t need to apologize.

The way Lindsey reacted, though, the things she said, it’s so easy for Emily to see how Lindsey might really _be_ sorry. Emily doesn’t want to know what Lindsey’s sorry for, and if she doesn’t ask she never has to find out. When she opens her phone again for the first time since Lindsey came down to her apartment, Tinder is still open, but Lindsey’s profile is gone.

Well--if Lindsey can pretend nothing happened, Emily can do it better. She’s been ignoring how she feels about Lindsey for years. The whole thing already feels like a weird fever dream, even with Emily’s sheets still twisted from Lindsey’s body. If Lindsey really wants to forget, Emily can get over it. She’ll wallow in a private Spotify playlist, maybe cry a little, and then pretend that every single hookup was in her head, just a drawn-out daydream. She’s already half convinced herself. It had always felt too good to be real, anyway.

It works until they show up at practice, separately, the next day.

Lindsey smiles briefly at Emily when Emily appears in the locker room at the last possible second, but they don’t speak, there or on the field or in the ice baths after. Emily spends most of her time with Hayley and Lindsey spends most of the time glued to Tobin and Emily really believes that in a month, once Lindsey stops treating her like she’s contagious, everything will be exactly the way it was before. She believes it all the way out into the parking lot, where Meghan is leaning against her car.

“Hey,” Emily says, “Kling, stand up, you’re gonna scratch my paint.”

Meghan stands, but her arms are still crossed, and Emily knows she’s in trouble.

“What?” she says, bumping Meghan’s hip to move her aside so that she can throw her bag in the backseat.

“What did you do?” Meghan asks.

Emily gets pissed quickly. She has to take a breath and remind herself that Meghan has no idea what’s going on, and that Meghan’s just like this.

“Why do you assume I’m the one who fucked up?” Emily asks. “Anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Clearly you do,” Meghan says, “but I’ll bite. What happened with you and Lindsey? Because it _looks_ like a breakup.”

“No offense,” Emily says, closing her car door and crossing her arms to mirror Meghan’s, “but I’m not going to talk to you about this. We both played fine today. We’ll both play fine this weekend. As long as we’re playing well it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to you,” Meghan says. 

“Lots of things matter to me,” Emily says.

“Okay,” Meghan says, “well, you can--you should talk about them.”

“Bye Kling,” Emily says, and slips into the driver’s side of her car.

She’s half expecting Meghan to try to follow her, or knock on her door, or something, but for once she stops being nosy when she’s asked to and lets Emily go. Somehow that’s worse. She barely makes it into the parking deck before she starts crying. She turns the car off to do it, rests her hands on the top of her steering wheel, and lets it go.

There’s something about crying in the car. Something about containing it, in a space where she’s alone, in a space where she can leave it. She’s never able to do this in her room or anywhere else. She’s never able to cry like _this_, without holding anything back. She cries until her neck and throat hurt, until the tears stop coming, until she can unstick her hands from the steering wheel and press them to her eyes.

She takes a deep breath. Then another. Every time she does it her chest aches a little less. By the time she steps out of her car, her breathing is even and her eyes are dry.

She’s good at this part. She’s good at pretending.

She’s so good at pretending that when Lindsey shows up at her door four hours later, Emily doesn’t feel a thing. 

“Lindsey,” she says, “hey.”

Lindsey doesn’t react to Emily using her first name at all, and that’s when Emily realizes that Lindsey’s not actually paying any attention to her. She looks good, and Emily hates it, it makes her uncomfortable now in a way it never did before. She’s wearing a soft gray v-neck and skinny jeans with rips in them and...makeup. Just a little. 

“Em,” Lindsey says, “can I come in? Just for a sec.”

Emily wants to say no, but she steps back and lets Lindsey inside anyway. She crosses her arms over her chest because it feels like she’ll cave in on herself otherwise. It doesn’t make sense for her to be upset, when she knows that the whole mess was on her to begin with and only continued because she didn’t have to guts to stop it. She sort of did stop it, in a way, and yet she still feels guilty. Mostly she’s exhausted, and wants her apartment to herself so she can process, or better yet distract herself. It’s impossible to distract herself from Lindsey when Lindsey’s right there. 

“I’m not sorry,” Lindsey says. When Emily only blinks, Lindsey continues, and Emily notices the way that Lindsey is wringing her hands. 

“I’m not sorry for kissing you,” Lindsey clarifies. 

“I don’t think you can take that back,” Emily jokes weakly, “that’s not how apologies work.”

“Give me one date,” Lindsey powers ahead, “just one. Doesn’t have to be right now. Just give me one date to get it right.”

Emily opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She’s fixated on Lindsey’s mouth, her brows furrowed, trying to understand.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey says.

“You just said you weren’t,” Emily replies, and Lindsey laughs in exasperation, pressing her fingers to her temples.

“I’m not sorry for kissing you,” Lindsey says, “I’m sorry for everything else, making this a mess.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Emily asks. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from a hundred miles away, but it’s convincingly even, and Lindsey looks comforted when she smiles and crosses her arms.

“Taking you on a date,” she replies.

It’s so horribly, painfully awkward. Everything about the next 24 hours is agonizing. They don’t have practice and normally Emily and Lindsey would be out fucking around somewhere together--or fucking each _other_, lately--but they don’t even text each other until four PM. Emily’s just been puttering around all day, and she’s halfway through reorganizing her shoe collection when Lindsey texts her, finally.

**Lindsey**: Pick you up at 7 :)

-

Lindsey is nervous.

It’s a different kind of nerves than she gets before a game. She doesn’t always get nervous before games anymore, but even when she does, it doesn’t feel like this. Before games that matter more than others, the nervousness starts in her stomach. When she pulls her car around from the parking lot to pick Emily up, she feels a new tightness in her chest, creeping up into her throat, making it hard to swallow.

When Emily steps outside, it becomes hard to breathe, too. Her hair is down. Lindsey doesn’t even remember the last time she saw Emily’s hair down. When Emily slides into the passenger seat Lindsey can see the sheen of chapstick on Emily’s lips and has to force herself to look away. 

“Hey,” Emily says eventually, and Lindsey realizes she’s just been sitting there, gripping her steering wheel with both hands. 

“Hi,” Lindsey says, “you look nice,” and avoids eye contact by putting the car into drive again. She knows she’s bright red, even before she glances at Emily out of the corner of her eye and sees Emily hiding a laugh in her shoulder. 

“Um, where are you taking me?” Emily asks.

“Try and guess,” Lindsey suggests, even though she’s fairly confident that Emily won’t be able to. Giving her a hard time makes it all feel much more natural, but the tightness in her chest is stubborn. 

“Costco,” Emily says. “Weiners and clearance aisles. Very romantic.”

“Shut up,” Lindsey laughs, “we’re going to a beer theater. They’re showing that Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson conman movie.”

“Conwoman,” Emily corrects her, and Lindsey rolls her eyes. 

“You don’t even drink beer,” she continues, and Lindsey shrugs. 

“I could,” she says, “and anyway, you’re really into the craft beer bro scene so…”

Emily has no funny comeback for that. She’s quiet for the rest of the ride, and it only occurs to Lindsey when she parks that Emily might be just as nervous as she is. Somehow, that’s the thing to make the tightness in her chest subside. In the lobby when they order drinks, Lindsey traps Emily between her hips and the bar, leaning over so that her chin hovers inches above Emily’s shoulder as she looks over the draft list. 

“What are you getting?” Lindsey asks. She’s not reading the list at all. 

“The double IPA,” Emily says, her voice wavering just enough to make Lindsey smile, “you?”

“I don’t really know what I’m looking at,” Lindsey says, “why don’t you pick for me?”

Whatever Emily picks for her just tastes like beer, but Lindsey drinks it anyway, and from then on the awkwardness almost disappears completely. It’s kind of a dumb, bad movie, but it’s funny, and Emily’s funnier. When they leave the theater, Emily puts her hand briefly on Lindsey’s lower back, and the feeling lingers all the way back to the car. 

-

They end up parked by the water with slices of Costco pizza. 

“It’s technically illegal to be here right now,” Lindsey says.

“We’re professional athletes,” Emily says, “we can outrun anyone, it’s fine.”

“_You_ can,” Lindsey says, “I’m not fast.”

“You are,” Emily says, “but if they caught you, you’d just beat them up.”

Lindsey doesn’t continue the banter, and for a moment Emily’s afraid that she’s insulted her somehow. When she turns her head to get a good look at Lindsey’s face, with the pizza still in her mouth, she sees that she’s wrong. Lindsey’s eyes are far away. The wind off the water has messed with her hair, pulling pieces out of her ponytail. Lindsey didn’t wear a good enough jacket to be out here at this time of night, but Emily knows that one of her sweatshirts is in Lindsey’s trunk. She’s about to mention it when Lindsey speaks, trapping her hands between her knees.

“I’m sorry for all this dumb bullshit,” Lindsey says quietly, “everything before tonight, I know I probably made you feel used.”

Emily swallows and takes a thin napkin from between them, wiping the grease from her fingertips.

“It was my idea,” Emily reminds Lindsey, who doesn’t seem comforted. She’s still looking out over the water, her thin eyebrows furrowed. 

“It was your idea,” Lindsey concedes, “but I was the one who let it keep going on after I knew I had feelings for you, and that was gross of me. I should have stopped it the second I realized how badly I wanted to kiss you, and I _knew_ that. But I was scared and I let that control me and I ended up taking advantage of you, and I’m sorry.”

It’s a lot to process. The idea that Lindsey could ever take advantage of her is difficult for Emily to even comprehend. As far as she’s concerned, there’s nothing that Lindsey did that was too much, that Emily didn’t want. The problem, all along, was that Emily had wanted more. Apparently they both had. Emily’s only hurt that she’s apparently bad enough at reading Lindsey that it didn’t occur to her all along that Lindsey might have had feelings for her, too. 

Right now, in the moment, Emily doesn’t try to stop herself from reaching for Lindsey. She realizes it’s the first time she’s let the urge to touch Lindsey go entirely unchecked and it knocks the wind out of her lungs. She takes Lindsey’s hand and laces their fingers together, and Lindsey finally looks at her. 

“If anyone took advantage of anyone,” Emily says, “by that logic, I took advantage of _you_.”

“How do you figure that?” Lindsey asks. And, well, if Lindsey can be brave, Emily can be brave, too.

“Because I’ve wanted to kiss you since we were seventeen,” Emily says, “and I came up with the whole dumb thing to begin with.”

Lindsey’s hand goes a little slack in Emily’s, and Emily starts wondering how cold the water is.

“You’ve wanted to kiss me the whole time?” Lindsey asks, and now it’s Emily who can’t look at her.

“Uh, yeah,” Emily says, “I mean, more like I’ve had a crush on you since then. It waxed and waned. I don’t know. I tried to get over it but it’s not like you made it easy on me.”

“You had a crush on me in college?” Lindsey asks, and Emily blushes. When Lindsey squeezes her hand, she forces herself to answer.

“Yeah,” Emily says, “I guess I didn’t really know you yet so that’s kind of weird. But I used to...get up sometimes and watch your PSG games. Not all of them, just if I knew I had time.”

“You could have told me,” Lindsey says.

“You weren’t ready to hear it,” Emily says, and immediately regrets it. She finally looks at Lindsey again and is expecting her to be hurt, but she doesn’t look hurt at all. She’s still holding Emily’s hand, anyway.

“You’re right,” she says eventually.

“Plus,” Emily says, backtracking, “it was weird. Creepy of me to have a crush on you like, the second we both showed up here. You didn’t even remember me.”

“Oh my God,” Lindsey says, and then she starts laughing.

Emily lets her laugh for a second before she says, “what?” When Lindsey doesn’t answer, she bumps Lindsey’s knee with hers and repeats herself.

“Lindsey,” she says, “what?”

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, “I’m sorry. God, that was so fucking--I’m so--I’m so dumb. I told you I didn’t remember you because I felt like I was such a bitchy teenager and I didn’t want... I didn’t want you to remember me like that. I was expecting you to say ‘Hey, remember when you bullied everyone at camp that wasn’t as good as you?’ if I said I remembered camp. I was afraid I was gonna get yelled at.”

Emily is stunned.

“Yelled at?” she repeats, “by _me_?”

When Lindsey doesn’t answer her, she forces eye contact, drawing her eyebrows together.

“Were you afraid of me?”

Lindsey lets out a breathless laugh, leaning hard back into the bench.

“Terrified,” she says. “You had everything I didn’t. You went to college and people liked you so much. They still do. Everyone loves you. You’re so funny and so smart. And you got to get drafted, you were first overall, and I was...just that prissy girl that went to France because she thought she was too good for college soccer.”

“So you did remember me,” Emily realizes out loud.

“Yes,” Lindsey says, “I used to daydream about being at UNC and having to play you.”

“You used to daydream about me kicking your ass, you mean,” Emily jokes, and Lindsey laughs again, and it’s such a good laugh, such a clear, full, carefree sound that it makes Emily’s face split into a grin that hurts her cheeks.

Lindsey brings their joined hands to her mouth and kisses Emily’s knuckles, and Emily feels it all the way down to her toes. 

“Are we doing this?” she asks, mostly to the universe. It still feels impossible. She’s not sure that’ll ever go away. 

“We need a rule,” Lindsey decides, and Emily rolls her eyes so hard she’s afraid they’ll get stuck.

“No rules,” she says, and uses her free hand to pull Lindsey into a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys SO MUCH for all your comments and for reading along! I had a lot of fun writing this but I'm also glad to be done with it, the ending was so stubbornly difficult to write for some reason. Enjoy!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got asked about an epilogue and decided to deliver but I SWEAR this is the last bit. I swear. Promise.
> 
> Oh, also, I made a Twitter, so come yell at me/with me. @unbecomings_ :)

Taking it slow is much harder than Lindsey anticipated.

Now that she can kiss Emily whenever she wants--well, not _whenever_, but closer to it--all she wants to do is kiss Emily. When she does kiss Emily, it’s so easy to get carried away. Her body remembers what it was like to press Emily’s into a mattress. Her body probably remembers it better than her brain does. 

But it was her idea to take it slow. Some part of her is a little bit afraid of what it will be like to sleep with Emily again now that everything’s different. She’d never admit it, but she’s nervous about it, and that frustrates her even more. She’s had sex with Emily. She’s had lots of sex with Emily. There’s nothing to be nervous about.

Except that there is.

They’re watching some movie--Lindsey’s not paying any attention--and Emily’s drawing circles on Lindsey’s inner thigh with her fingertips.

“Son,” Lindsey says, but Emily’s eyes stay fixed on the screen.

“Hmm,” Emily responds. Lindsey can feel Emily’s touch through her sweatpants as if there’s nothing separating them at all.

“Emily,” Lindsey says, “come on.”

“Something you want?” Emily asks. The remote is on the other side of her, and Lindsey has to reach over Emily’s lap to grab it. Emily doesn’t stop her, just smiles toothily at her when she pauses the movie.

“Can we make out?” Lindsey asks, and turns bright red.

She’s expecting Emily to make fun of her. Emily should make fun of her, honestly, because she sounds like a horny teenager. She doesn’t, though— she goes soft and takes the remote, placing it on the coffee table and leaning into Lindsey. 

“We can always make out,” Emily says, tilting her chin up. “I always wanna make out with you.”

Lindsey doesn’t ask her to prove it. Instead she places a hand on Emily’s knee and cranes around to kiss her. It’s awkward with both of them facing forward on the couch, but it’s still good. Kissing Emily is completely different than kissing anyone else ever was. She’s _so_ good at it. Her mouth is warm against Lindsey’s and she doesn’t try to deepen the kiss. She reaches up to cup Lindsey’s cheek in one hand, and Lindsey feels it rush all the way down her spine. She wants more. She wants to feel Emily’s body against hers, not just their knees pressed together on the couch. 

That feeling creeps into the kiss until it grows desperate, and Lindsey’s the first to open her mouth to it. Emily melts against her, dropping the hand on Lindsey’s cheek to the front of her chest, curling her fingers into the collar of Lindsey’s t-shirt. Emily swiped her tongue along Lindsey’s bottom lip and Lindsey breaks the kiss to take a deep breath. 

“C’mere,” Emily says, dropping her hands to Lindsey’s hips.

Lindsey lets Emily guide her and is surprised when she ends up straddling Emily’s lap. 

“I don’t want to crush you,” Lindsey mumbles against Emily’s mouth. 

They’ve been like this before. Last time Emily toppled her onto her back on the couch, so Lindsey can’t imagine why Emily would want to try it again. 

“You aren’t,” Emily assures her. Her voice sounds different. Lindsey can’t put her finger on it, but she can kiss Emily again and she does, resting her hands on Emily’s shoulders. She feels huge and awkward, but Emily kisses her like it’s normal, like it’s all she’s ever wanted to do in her life. Lindsey has just started to relax and forget herself when Emily winds her arms around Lindsey’s waist, pulling Lindsey flush against her, and all the air leaves Lindsey’s lungs at once. 

The wave of longing hits her _hard_. It’s a deep, insistent ache, made worse by the way that Emily’s teeth feel against her lower lip. She rocks against Emily without thinking about it and Emily slips a hand under her shirt, over her lower back, helping pull Lindsey forward. Lindsey gets a sudden, vivid flash of the one and only time she attempted this position before Emily and the self-consciousness overwhelms her until she breaks the kiss.

“Linds,” Emily rasps. It sounds like the beginning of a sentence, but it’s not. She doesn’t say anything else. She moves the hand on Lindsey’s lower back, skating it along Lindsey’s spine, until her fingers brush over the clasp of Lindsey’s bra. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Emily asks, and her voice is still so hoarse that the sound shoots down directly between Lindsey’s legs.

“No,” she mumbles, “I want--”

She doesn’t let herself finish. Emily doesn’t need her to, either. She unhooks Lindsey’s bra with one hand, with Lindsey’s shirt still on, and Lindsey almost falls out of Emily’s lap trying to twist and get both articles of clothing off. Emily steadies her with both hands on Lindsey’s hips again, and Lindsey pushes her hands under Emily’s shirt.

“Off,” Lindsey murmurs. 

“Yeah, okay,” Emily says, and she’s blushing, and now Lindsey’s smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt, and now Emily’s taking Lindsey’s face in her hands and dragging her into another kiss. 

Emily’s still wearing her sports bra and Lindsey wants to take it off but she’s enjoying everything too much, especially the brush of Emily’s tongue against her lips again. Lindsey makes a soft sound against Emily’s mouth when Emily’s hand snakes between them. Lindsey ends up using a hand on the back of the couch to adjust so that Emily can get her hand down the front of Lindsey’s sweats. Emily hesitates then, and Lindsey can’t stand it, can’t stand the idea of waiting another minute. 

She slides out of Emily’s lap to shimmy out of her sweats and underwear and kick them away, and she wishes Emily would get undressed too-- but there’s also something so hot about Emily sitting there, shirtless and in sweats with her mouth just slightly open, as if Lindsey is the sexiest thing she’s ever seen.

For the first time in her life, she believes it.

She’s not sure what to do with herself before Emily’s eyes come back to her face, and Emily holds out one hand. Lindsey takes it and settles back in Emily’s lap, and Emily drops her hands to Lindsey’s hips and pulls her in. 

“Gonna ruin your sweats,” Lindsey mumbles, embarrassed.

“Don’t care,” Emily says, and Lindsey can tell that she means it. 

Now when she kisses Lindsey’s neck, it feels different than it used to. It feels _better_, because it feels like a choice, and when Emily starts to give her a hickey she laughs. 

“Em,” she says, and Emily lets up, reaching up with one hand to tug Lindsey’s hair out of her ponytail. 

“We said no rules,” Emily says, but she bites Lindsey’s lips instead this time. 

Eventually Lindsey needs her hands on top of the couch again so that Emily can get her hand back between Lindsey’s legs. She can’t keep her hands off of Emily for long, because she needs the feeling of Emily’s shoulders under her hands to steady her. It’s so easy to lose herself, so easy to forget everything that isn’t the muscle flexing under her hands, the puff of Emily’s breath against the corner of her mouth. Emily places her free hand on Lindsey’s lower back to support her when Lindsey sinks down onto her fingers, and the tiny, tender gesture makes Lindsey’s heart skip. 

She curses under her breath and expects Emily to laugh at her, but instead Emily kisses her, and then Lindsey’s moving. She rocks in Emily’s lap, curling a hand around the back of Emily’s neck, and tries to hold it together. It’s so much harder being in control. Lindsey knows she could get herself off in seconds like this, but she doesn’t want to yet, and holding herself back is almost impossible. She’s thinking about that, rolling her hips against Emily’s, when Emily does something with her wrist that lets her use her thumb against Lindsey and ruins Lindsey’s concentration entirely. 

“Fuck,” she gasps, and Emily redirects to kiss her neck again. 

Lindsey’s thighs are burning with the effort by the time she comes, but it’s so, so worth it. It’s the best orgasm she’s ever had, it feels like it goes on forever, like it gets more intense every second. It leaves her breathless and almost laughing into Emily’s shoulder, her legs clamping around Emily’s thighs, her nails digging into Emily’s shoulders. 

The best part is, when she lifts her head, she can kiss Emily back into the couch cushions without having to think twice about it. Emily takes her hand back and they kiss like that for long enough that Lindsey, resting bonelessly in Emily’s lap, loses track of time. 

When she stands up on wobbly legs, Emily looks concerned and confused. Now it’s Lindsey’s turn to hold out her hand, and when Emily takes it she pulls Emily in and kisses her again, and then one more time just because she can. 

“C’mon,” she says, tugging Emily along, “take me to your room.”


End file.
